There are also tastings, culinary demonstrations, and an opportunity to mold chocolate bars to take home.

The museum is open permanently from Wednesday, March 8.

INSIDER visited the museum for a tour to learn about, make, and eat a lot of chocolate.

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This is the entrance to Choco-Story New York, located at Jacques Torres' SoHo store at 350 Hudson Street. The mural was designed by local artists, Torres told journalists on the tour.

Kevin Chiu/Jacques Torres

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Inside, before the tour even begins, visitors are greeted with chocolate truffles — the first of many tastings in the museum.

Lydia Lee/Champagne Taittinger

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The first part of the tour is led by chocolate expert Eddy Van Belle, who collaborated with Torres on the museum.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

Van Belle amassed his chocolate knowledge from traveling around the world, and has opened four other Choco-Story museums in Belgium, Prague, Paris, and Uxmal, Mexico.

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The museum — which is really more of an exhibition — starts at the very beginning of chocolate's 5,500-year history, with cocoa trees in Central America.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

Visitors learn surprising facts about the sweet — for example, cocoa was consumed as a drink before it was eaten, once mixed with blood as an offering to Mayan gods, and even inhaled for pleasure.

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It is filled with fascinating artifacts used in the production of ground cocoa beans, like this horse-shaped cutter, which could be used to grate cocoa and dates back to 1800.

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Chocolate first became popular in Europe as a drink. The first known chocolate shop opened in Spain in 1850.

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The wealthy would keep their drinking chocolate warm in tea cozies. The one pictured above (center) is particularly flamboyant.

Chocolate was only really enjoyed by the lower classes after 1860, when Napoleon III lifted a tax on the sweet. The introduction of bean-crushing machines fueled by steam also made chocolate easier to produce, and therefore cheaper to sell.

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As part of the tour, Torres whipped up a pot of pure hot cocoa with sugar and spices (cinnamon, hot chile, and anise). Curious to taste the hot cocoa in its original form, I tried a small cup and found it so bitter that I couldn't finish it.

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Fun fact: Nuns in Oaxaca, Mexico, are to thank for sweet hot chocolate — they had the genius idea of sweetening the cocoa drink with sugar. A cocoa drink made with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, hazelnut, vanilla, and orange became a favorite drink of Spaniards in Mexico.

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The solid chocolate we're used to biting into today is relatively young. Molds were first used at the start of the 19th century.

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Next, Torres demonstrated how to make chocolate truffles. First he prepared chocolate bases in a mold, and scraped off excess liquid.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

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He then stirred cream into more chocolate to create a ganache, and poured the mixture into a mold to set.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

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Next, he placed ganache that had been prepared earlier into a mold and closed it with chocolate, with the help of a fancy chocolate machine.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

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We got to eat the freshly made truffles and they were heavenly. I may have gone back for a second one...

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

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The best part of the experience was molding chocolate under Torres' direction. While participants get to shape chocolate into bars that they can take home, they don't get to make it from scratch.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

Torres' assistants loaded mixtures of dark and milk chocolate out of machines into clear piping bags, before handing them to participants.

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Armed with my bag of liquid chocolate (I opted for milk), and in front of a plastic tray with cut-out molds, an assistant cut the very bottom of the bag so I could start squeezing the chocolate. It was strangely therapeutic.

Chloe Pantazi/INSIDER

For extra flavor and texture, everyone gets cups of chocolate chunks, almonds, hazelnuts, and sea salt, which I sprinkled liberally over the chocolate.

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Visitors can either pay $40 for the hands-on experience alone, or $45 to make chocolate and get into the museum. As interesting as the history of chocolate is, admittedly shaping the chocolate bars was far more entertaining.

Aly Weisman/INSIDER

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Eager to eat the chocolate, I asked Torres how long it would take for the bars to set. "Three days, mademoiselle," he joked. I was entirely prepared to come back in three days, but really, it was 15 minutes.

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I snuck back into the kitchen exactly 15 minutes later to retrieve my treats from the fridge.

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Wrapped in their packets, my chocolates looked super professional. And despite the shameful amount of chocolate I had consumed within the last hour, I was ready to eat more.